How McCain can win the White House

So the other day I touched on McCain's need to win the moderates to win the presidency, but Mac's appearance to the Council for National Policy prompted me to expand upon these thoughts in my Los Angeles Daily News column today:

"Hey Sen. McCain, wanna know how you can win in November?

Let's go back to Friday and the Council for National Policy, where you met behind closed doors with - and I say this as a lifelong Republican - some of the right-wingerest of right-wingers in a pre-election kiss-up. The super-secret CNP, founded by Tim LaHaye as a forum for select conservatives, reportedly includes members such as James Dobson, Bob Jones III and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos.

'I don't think he came close to saying something to excite conservatives sitting on the sidelines waiting to hear something that would get them on his team,' Richard Viguerie, a longtime business associate of Sun Myung Moon, was prominently featured saying in The Washington Times, Moon's baby. 'Everything he said was rehash of what he has said before.'

Viguerie, according to the Times, echoed a sentiment of other CNP members: 'He didn't assure us he would bring conservatives into his White House or administration.' Viguerie was also upset that McCain wasn't more candid about his personal - that's the keyword, folks - faith.

McCain, don't worry about exciting the Christian Right. They'll be 'on your team' at a place called the ballot box when they're wretching at the thought of a Democrat-controlled White House. Yeah, even as they run to the next secret-handshake CNP meeting to gloat about their alleged 'protest vote.'

Everything you said was a rehash? Cool, Mac, because you shouldn't be changing your message right now to please the right. No assurances of CNP-acceptable righties in the White House? No promises needed.

Let them rant. Let them complain. Keep shaking off anti-Catholic televangelist John Hagee. You've got work to do. It's called 'being yourself.'

Because that, my friend, is the only way you'll win the election come November.

You are one of the few Republicans, in this day and age and after eight years of Bush's divisive presidency, who has the ability to handily lay claim to the middle. You need the ever-growing middle, moderate sea of voters to win the White House. You don't need to do anything that will get you painted as a panderer to the far right. The middle's reaction to that would be a sort of synchronized electoral 'ick.'..."

Read the whole thing!

Comments

[nash]

Keep whistling through the graveyard. I know this will irritate you to no end, but to use a Biblical analogy, your strategy is like building a house on a foundation of sand. McCain needs the grassroots, but the grassroots don't need him.

Conservatives can hold the line against the Democrats with a Republican minority, just like the Democrat minority did when the Republicans held both the White House and Congress.

[Reaps]

"but the grassroots don't need him."

Ho ho ho.

Obama/Hillary '08, then?

Friggin' AMWAY..